In a year full of injuries and inconsistencies from these Friars, Wednesday’s game against the Georgetown Hoyas summed up PC’s season pretty fittingly. On Saturday the Friars held probably the conference’s best half-court offense to under 50 points with under 5 minutes left in the game. On Wednesday, the Friars gave up their most points all season in a 93-72 defeat against a pretty pedestrian offensive outfit in Georgetown.
In regard to injuries, the Friars have been dealt bad hand after bad hand when it came to player’s health, but going into this game things seemed to be trending in their favor. Wesley Cardet would return to the Friar lineup after an 18-day absence. While Corey Floyd Jr remained out with a concussion, their opponent was dealing with a pretty big absence of their own. Soon to be Big East Freshman of the year Thomas Sorber was held out of this one with turf toe. Yet none of those things seemed to matter as Georgetown would land a knockout blow late in the first half once Oswin exited the game with foul trouble, and the Friars could never quite get themselves off the canvas.
Bensley Joseph Stays Hot, Jayden Pierre Does Not
In our previews for both games against Georgetown, we spoke about how guard play would be key to victory. In the first meeting with the Hoyas and this past Saturday against Villanova, Bensley Joseph and Jayden Pierre were excellent. Joseph would remain hot in this one, but Jayden Pierre was anything but.
Joseph led the Friars in scoring tonight with 25 points and would have 14 of the Friars first 16 points with the Friars enjoying a 5-point lead early. Pierre, who might’ve had his best all-around game of the season against Villanova, struggled mightily in this one. He didn’t register his first point until 8:09 left in the contest and was 0/8 from the floor up until that point. From the onset he just didn’t look ready to play and that is both disappointing and emblematic of Pierre at this point in his career. You know very quickly what type of Pierre you are going to get, and that’s not the sign of a consistent veteran upperclassman.
Jayden Epps had 18 for the Hoyas and Malik Mack was not very impressive in his 33 minutes but it did not matter. The Friars needed to rely on their backcourt duo of Joseph/Pierre and only got a good game from one of them.
The streakiness of Pierre continues, and you have to wonder if Pierre can make the jump to being more consistent as a senior next year. These are tough decisions that Kim English is going to have to make in the next month.
https://twitter.com/bocallday/status/1892404876853891380?s=46&t=jxSpiAPB3PvC74snCH-rvQ
Micah Peavy Dominates This One
In the first matchup between Providence and Georgetown Micah Peavy had a great game for the Hoyas to the tune of 27 points on 12/19 shooting yet somehow in this one he was even better. The 5th year senior finished Wednesday night with 30 points (11/22), 7 rebounds, 7 assists and 6 steals. He had his fingerprints all over this one and wasn’t going to let Ed Cooley continue to go winless against his former program. He is one of the best two-way players in the Big East and his offensive and defensive impacts were felt mightily in this one. It will be a shame if Peavy doesn’t find himself with First Team All-Big East accolades at season’s end.
Crucial Error Might’ve Cost Friars
When the Oswin Erhunmwunse picked up his second foul with 5:44 left in the first half, I texted that it is time to bring in Christ Essandoko. Kim English opted to leave Oswin in the game with two fouls, and a mere 39 seconds later he would pick up his third. The score was 28-29 in favor of the Hoyas at the time he was subbed out with his third foul, and Georgetown finished the half with a 19-3 run to end the half. It doesn’t help my argument that much that the team fell apart with Oswin out of the lineup, but if you subbed him out at the 5:44 mark you could’ve seen how the game went and either get to the half with him on the bench with 2 fouls or if things started to unravel sub him back in to stem the tide.
I’m certainly not one of those guys feels you must sub out a player when he picks up his second for the rest of the first half but trusting Oswin in this one is a head scratcher. Oswin is still developing as a basketball player and has been undisciplined with fouls all year long. Trusting that he’d avoid his third with 5:44 remaining in the half was a disaster waiting to happen and sure enough it did.
BOC: The issue is that you need to keep Oswin in because the players behind him aren’t Big East caliber Big Men. Essandoko may be the most mystifying player I’ve encountered in my support of the Friars, as I expected him to be a solid 10 and 6 type player this season. I’ve said this before, but Christ Essandoko’s misevaluation and inability to play Big East basketball is a close 1b to Hopkin’s season ending injury as to why the Providence season hasn’t come close to meeting expectations. The consensus preseason was that Essandoko would be your starting 5 and be a serviceable big. The fact that you can’t even have him on the court 27 games into a season because he is unplayable is a testament to where the depth is behind Oswin.
Summary
For Friar fans, losing this one hurts. First off, the undefeated streak with John Fanta announcing the game came to an end at 22 games. The Friars were 5-0 lifetime against Ed Cooley coaching the opposition and were 4-0 after he decided to betray Friartown for an in-conference rival. After the last matchup against the Hoyas, it almost felt the Friars would never fall to Cooley, even though eventually you knew they would. However, in a game where Georgetown was without their outstanding big man, PC shouldn’t have come near the type of performance they showed tonight, win or lose, and that’s where its most frustrating.
Fans are probably ready for the season to come to an end but there is more basketball to be played. The Friars will have about a week off before traveling to Milwaukee to take on a Marquette team who gave the Friars their largest defeat so far this season. The fun continues.
Assuming Essandoko is elsewhere next year, every minute he plays is a waste (and a knock on the coaching staff).
If Oswin is out for foul trouble, let Bonke take his lumps and develop. Christ’s +/- is so bad in BE play that I don’t know why Kim hasn’t done this yet. It’s essentially risk-free w/ upside.